Today, on my "National Catholic Register" Blog

Back to English Reformation subject matter! Today, my National Catholic Register blog features a discussion of the theological virtue Hope, the Poor Souls in Purgatory, and St. Thomas More! In the article I cite The Supplication of Souls:

St. Thomas More wrote his 1529 “The Supplication of Souls” to defend the doctrine of Purgatory and the devotion of prayer for the dead against attacks in pre-Reformation England. Anticipating Pope Benedict XVI—who said that if Purgatory did not exist, we would have to invent it— by five centuries, More comments that Reason, not to mention God’s mercy and justice, demands that Purgatory exist:

“For since God in His righteousness will not leave sin unpunished and in His goodness will not perpetually punish the sin after the person’s repentance, it follows there must be temporal punishment. And now since the person often dies before undergoing such punishment . . . a very child, almost, can see the conclusion: that the punishment remaining due and undone at death is to be endured and sustained afterward.” (p. 135 in Scepter Publishers’ edition, rendered in Modern English by Mary Gottschalk)

The Souls in Purgatory accept that they should undergo this purification in accord with God’s mercy and justice, noting that neither they nor the living should presume on God’s mercy, but submit to His justice. While they suffer in Purgatory, the Souls fear that they will be forgotten if the attacks against prayers and Masses for them influence their families—as we are too really to presume that our beloved dead are in Heaven and neglect to pray for them.

Next up on my personal reading list is More's The Life of Pico, also from Scepter Publishers in an updated translation:

Presented to modern readers in English for the first time in 500 years, The Life of Pico is a biography of one of the Renaissance’s most famous figures: Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola (1463-94). Given More’s demanding personal spiritual life, one would assume that More wishes to praise a famous and virtuous man. But what emerges from this book is quite different. Pico turns out to be an extraordinarily virtuous, talented, and wealthy man, but a man nonetheless, who is missing something essential. And so More calls Pico “a very spectacle” of virtue.

More sees Pico as very much like himself, as the two turn out to have very similar life experiences. Both carry some scars from difficult or missing relationships with their fathers, both are extremely talented and powerful in their time, and both had been steered toward a religious vocation which they did not embrace.

The book is as much a riddle about More as it is an explanation of Pico. More’s great-grandson and biographer, Cresacre More, claims that Thomas More as a young man sought to emulate Pico once he decided that his path in life was marriage and not the cloth. The book’s first half contains the abridged account of Pico’s life. The second half is More’s rhymed verse on the 12 rules of spiritual battle, the 12 weapons of spiritual battle, and the 12 properties of a lover, followed by Pico’s prayer to God. In the last analysis, this biography of Pico becomes an exercise in the discernment of true virtue, in the contradictions and difficulties one encounters in the immersion into the world, and at the same time, in the life of God.

Heidi's Ugly Cakes

So yesterday I posted on the strange story of a group of Cubs baseball fans unable to use their cellphones to find out what was happening in the seventh game of the World Series. They had gathered outside Wrigley Field and the WSJ writer noted that no one "seemed" to have a simple little piece of technology, a portable transistor radio.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I drove to Norfork, Arkansas and stayed at a "getaway cabin" just yards away from the White River.

It was indeed a getaway: quiet, far off the road, no phone service, no wifi, no clocks in the cabin except on the microwave. We enjoyed seeing the Milky Way and hundreds of stars at night so far from any light pollution. We did buy an inexpensive AT&T phone so we'd at least have phone access. There was a television and I brought a transistor radio.

As I said, I like access to the internet and posting on this blog and sharing on social media. My husband wanted to post pictures on facebook, check email, etc. So we did leave the cabin a few times to find free wifi at restaurants and coffee shops. We drove to The Printing Press Cafe and Ice Cream Parlor in Calico Rock, for example, and visited another coffee shop in Mountain Home called the Angler's Cafe.

In Norfork, however, we found Heidi's Ugly Cakes after several people told us we should try it. We need to go back and have some cake next time. The story of how the proprietor opened the little cafe and how it came to be named "Heidi's Ugly Cakes" is part of the attraction. Heidi's cakes are ugly just because they aren't bundt cakes or layer cakes--they are not "fou-fou" as she was quoted in a newspaper story framed and posted inside. Her cakes are baked in glass (Pyrex) baking dishes. She also makes different sandwiches, small fried fruit pies, and other treats--we split a delicious cinnamon roll, sweet and spicy. Her mother-in-law, who encouraged her to find a way to sell her cakes, called them "Heidi's Ugly Cakes" and even gave her a sign with those words. Heidi sold her cakes to a restaurant and they were very popular items on the menu there.

That restaurant closed however, and Heidi's mother-in-law died. An admirer of her cakes, however, wouldn't give up. He wanted Heidi to open her own place. He found the location--it's right next door to a liquor-cigarette-bait shop--and even raised some money to open the place. Norfork is a small town but many people wanting to fish for trout on the White River avail themselves of services there, so Heidi's is a busy place. She was a welcoming hostess and a very busy cook and baker. She put on fresh coffee for us and then told me to "cheat" and pour our coffee while it was still brewing. The half-and-half was in the fridge with the cakes. She even told us we could use her wifi when the cafe was closed: "just sit out there on the bench and surf the web, honey."

Or, we could watch the river flow on by and hear the fish jumping.

Pictures copyright 2016, by Mark U. Mann. All rights reserved.

Cubs Fans without Radios

This is an outlier post, I know, but something in a Wall Street Journal story about the Chicago Cubs caught my eye. Writer Jason Gay described the scene outside Wrigley Field in Chicago as the seventh game of the World Series was being played in Cleveland, Ohio. A huge crowd had gathered, waiting to celebrate if the Cubs actually won their first World Series since 1908. The crowd was so big that their cellphones won't work, and the fans couldn't get updates. The problem: no one had an AM/FM radio, a piece of 20th century technology:

Phones didn’t work; the crowd was so thick that local cell capacity was choked. “There is no service,” said 20-year-old Brady Friedkin. A radio might have done the trick, but nobody seemed to have a radio. A thoroughly modern crowd was suddenly reliant on the most primal communication tool: word-of-mouth. It could have been 5,000 years ago. It could have been…1908.

I like web-based and satellite access too, but I think some of us become too dependent on it. For lack of a simple transistor radio, these Cubs fan were forced to search out a television set, some watching a big screen tv in a private residence from the street! (You might remember old movies with scenes of people standing outside stores with television sets in the display window!)

When I was growing up, our family wouldn't think of going to sporting event without a transistor radio; that way we could listen to the play-by-play. Perhaps today we have become too dependent on cellphones and tablets. Yes, the "thoroughly modern crowd" relied upon person-to-person communication, and that's a good thing, but it's amazing to me that "nobody seemed to have a radio"!

In 1999/2000 PBS produced a program about the development of the transistor and the introduction of the transistor radio, battery-powered, portable, and relatively inexpensive. 

Guess what? There's no DVD, only a VHS video of the program, and it's rare. As rare as a transistor radio in the satellite generation.

Oh, and if you're looking for something on the Fifth of November and the Gunpowder Plot, here you go!

The English Martyrs Chapel on the Feast of Simon and Jude

The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Cardinal Nichols, preached at the blessing of the newly decorated chapel dedicated to the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales (Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs) last Friday:

Within the chapel, our eyes are drawn to the lettering on the end wall of the chapel. They remind us powerfully that, two miles from here and four hundred or so years ago, the truths enshrined in the Catholic faith and the expectations of the state clashed in the most violent of ways. The setting if these words, within the recollected space of Westminster Cathedral, cannot mask the horror to which they refer. They challenge us to see that the time we give to God in worship is not, or should not be, offered so that we may feel good in ourselves, but so that God may work more effectively through us. Prayer grants us a deeper awareness of our role as missionary disciples, strengthening us to take his mercy and compassion, his truth and his love into every part of our lives. And only God knows where that role may ultimately lead us.

In today’s Gospel, the first disciples are mentioned individually, by name. Most of them would have had little social standing in the society of their day; none of them could have had much of an idea what being an apostle would entail. But they offered themselves as they were. For the most part, and despite any number of setbacks along the way, they remained faithful. Their fidelity has brought such a light into our world!

In St George’s Chapel, there are more than twelve flames in its dark mosaic sky. Each of the flames is inscribed with the name of a martyr. Unlike the first apostles, many of them had a considerable status in the world. But their courage and faithfulness, expressed in quite different stories, speak to us of an integrity and a courage rarely seen. They light up more than the ceiling of the chapel. They offer us a witness that challenges us to assess afresh our own commitment to the faith and our practice of it.

You may find pictures of the chapel here. An article in The Catholic Herald describes the chapel:

A new decorative scheme commemorating forty English Catholic martyrs has recently been completed in the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs in Westminster Cathedral. . . .

The chapel contains the cathedral’s war memorial and its completion marks the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

The new design by Tom Phillips CBE RA links this event with another chapter in the nation’s suffering, that of the English martyrs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The names of the forty Catholic martyrs are emblazoned in mosaic across a dark sky in the chapel vault and their suffering is recalled by a depiction of the Tyburn gallows in marble on the west wall.

A Suppressed Holy Week From the Former Soviet Union

The BBC Music Magazine has chosen The Clarion Choir's recording of Maximilian Steinburg's Passion Week from Naxos as its Choral Recording of the Month for December 2016 and provides an excerpt here. Providing some background, conductor Steven Fox writes:

My dear colleague Barbara Mouk had been telling me about Passion Week since I first met her in 2004. Her father, the Russian- American conductor Igor Buketoff, had given her the score shortly before he passed away. The composer of the piece, Maximilian Steinberg, was the prized student of Rimsky-Korsakov, and eventually became not only his son-in-law, but also his successor on the composition faculty of the St Petersburg Conservatory.

Steinberg composed Passion Week in secret over a three year period, 1920-23, when the Bolsheviks had just banned sacred music, so it was never performed. Barbara explained to me that she believed Shostakovich, who was Steinberg’s student, had brought the piece over to the US on one of his trips here, hoping there might be a choir here that could finally perform the piece.

But Maestro Buketoff had trouble finding an American choir that was adept at singing in Church Slavonic. So he eventually handed the mission off to Barbara, and Barbara took it to me. But I must admit that I also was (shamefully!) slow to take on the project. During my first years working with Clarion, we were almost exclusively focused on performing Baroque and Classical music. But in more recent years, we expanded into later periods, particularly with The Clarion Choir. As our repertoire started to take this new direction, Barbara re-approached me about Passion Week and said - 'you have no reason not to give this piece a serious look now!' And I am so thankful to her that she did. The piece is extraordinary, and, in my mind, deserving of a special place in the Russian choral repertoire.

The style of the work combines the rich vocal scoring and luscious Romantic palette one associates with Rachmaninov's choral works, but it also adds more modern elements of style: there are times when the rich vocal texture reverts hauntingly to a single voice and then into stark silence. The silences between phrases are a critical part of the piece, as we learned in performing and recording it. They add a sense of contemplativeness that I believe comes directly out of the Holy Week plainchants upon which the work is based.

There is another recording of this work available too:

Cappella Romana has even issued a deluxe vinyl recording!

Cutting and Pasting and "Marking the Hours"

Peter Kwasniewski has a post over at the New Liturgical Movement blog with pictures of an Altar Missal with the changes being made in the midst of the liturgical reform in the Catholic Church during the 1960's. As soon as I saw the markings, the cutting of sections out of the pages, I thought of Eamon Duffy's 2007 book Marking the Hours: English People & Their Prayers, 1240-1570, now published by Yale University Press only in paperback:

In this richly illustrated book, religious historian Eamon Duffy discusses the Book of Hours, unquestionably the most intimate and most widely used book of the later Middle Ages. He examines surviving copies of the personal prayer books which were used for private, domestic devotions, and in which people commonly left traces of their lives. Manuscript prayers, biographical jottings, affectionate messages, autographs, and pious paste-ins often crowd the margins, flyleaves, and blank spaces of such books. From these sometimes clumsy jottings, viewed by generations of librarians and art historians as blemishes at best, vandalism at worst, Duffy teases out precious clues to the private thoughts and public contexts of their owners, and insights into the times in which they lived and prayed. His analysis has a special relevance for the history of women, since women feature very prominently among the identifiable owners and users of the medieval Book of Hours.

Books of Hours range from lavish illuminated manuscripts worth a king’s ransom to mass-produced and sparsely illustrated volumes costing a few shillings or pence. Some include customized prayers and pictures requested by the purchaser, and others, handed down from one family member to another, bear the often poignant traces of a family’s history over several generations. Duffy places these volumes in the context of religious and social change, above all the Reformation, discusses their significance to Catholics and Protestants, and describes the controversy they inspired under successive Tudor regimes. He looks closely at several special volumes, including the cherished Book of Hours that Sir Thomas More kept with him in the Tower of London as he awaited execution.

Duffy makes the distinction between the liturgical books of prayer used by monks and religious, including the Breviary, and these Books of Hours, which were used by the laity. Marking the Hours is lavishly illustrated and demonstrates that the laity really used these books, adding to them, writing in them, and, during the changes of the English Reformation, marking through certain prayers--for the pope or to St. Thomas a Becket--and even certain names (Queen Katherine of Aragon's in one case)--according to the religious changes taking place. Remember that in England it was first okay (and had been for centuries) to pray for the intercession of the saints and for the pope; then it wasn't; then it was; then it wasn't. Confusion reigned in people's devotional lives!

Newman's Angels and All Souls' Day

Please see my blog post at the National Catholic Register, scheduled to appear this morning here.

It's all about Blessed John Henry Newman's epic poem about the Four Last Things and the Poor Souls in Purgatory, particularly one poor soul, Gerontius.

Just a little preview:

In 1865 almost 20 years after becoming a Catholic, Newman wrote “The Dream of Gerontius”, a poetic epic about the soul after death. The poem was published in two installments of “The Month”, a journal published by the Jesuits in England later that year. It was an immediate and great success, even among non-Catholics, which is surprising since the soul of Gerontius, the title character, is committed to Purgatory. The role of angels, particularly of the Guardian Angel, is one of the highlights of the poem.

While it is sometimes mentioned along with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Newman’s poem is more personal and spiritual since it tells the experience of one soul after death, not the journey of a poet through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The text of the poem is available here.

Please read the rest here.

Blesseds John Slade and Bodey, Lay Martyrs

John Slade was executed on October 30 and John Bodey or Body (as Challoner names him) executed on All Souls Day, November 2, 1583 for being Catholics and not accepting Elizabeth I's Royal Supremacy over the Christian Church in England. The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on their martyrdoms focuses on Blessed John Bodey:

Martyr, b. at Wells, Somerset: 1549; d. at Andover, Wilts., 2 November, 1583. He studied at Winchester and New College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow in 1568. In June, 1576, he was deprived, with seven other Fellows, by the Visitor, Horne, Protestant Bishop of Winchester. Next year he went to Douay College to study civil law, returned to England in February, 1578, and probably married. Arrested in 1580, he was kept in iron shackles in Winchester gaol, and was condemned in April, 1583, together with John Slade, a schoolmaster, for maintaining the old religion and denying the Royal Supremacy. There was apparently a feeling that this sentence was unjust and illegal, and they were actually tried and condemned again at Andover, 19 August, 1583, on the same indictment. Bodey had a controversy with Humphreys, Dean of Winchester, on the Nicene Council, and the martyr's notes from Eusebius still exist. After his second trial, he wrote from prison to Dr. Humphrey Ely, "We consider that iron for this cause borne on earth shall surmount gold and, precious stones in Heaven. That is our mark, that is our desire. In the mean season we are threatened daily, and do look still when the hurdle shall be brought to the door. I beseech you, for God's sake, that we want not the good prayers of you all for our strength, our joy, and our perseverance unto the end. . . . From our school of patience the 16th September, 1583."

At his martyrdom, Bodey kissed the halter, saying, "O blessed chain, the sweetest chain and richest that ever came about any man's neck", and when told he died for treason, exclaimed, "You may make the hearing of a blessed Mass treason, or the saying of an Ave Maria treason . . . but I have committed no treason, although, indeed, I suffer the punishment due to treason". He exhorted the people to obey Queen Elizabeth and died saying, "Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus". His mother made a great feast upon the occasion of her son's happy death, to which she invited her neighbours, rejoicing at his death as his marriage by which his soul was happily and eternally espoused to the Lamb.

In his Memoirs of the Missionary Priests, Bishop Richard Challoner provides more background on John Slade, who had also traveled to Douai to study both civil and canon law, having been born in Dorsetshire. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered in Winchester.

John Bodey and John Slade were included in the beatifications of 1929. They are included in the list of the Martyrs of Douai, which was celebrated on October 29 in the Archdiocese of Westminster.

And in Post-Reformation England, Even More True

Amy Welborn writes for The Catholic Herald on how the Reformation did not so much help but hindered the influence of women in religious life by cutting off access to the convent:

For many years, the narrative on the Reformation and women has maintained that it must have been all good news. How could it not be? After all, Martin Luther and others had emphasised the freedom of the individual Christian believer, encouraged Bible reading and, therefore, literacy for all and, of course, had elevated and celebrated marriage. This, we are assured, was progress.

Perhaps not. As has been the case with many historical narratives and assumptions, the certainty that the Reformation produced net gains for women has been upended in recent decades. A survey of the large and continually growing body of research reveals wide agreement that is, in fact, 180 degrees away from the former view.

As Lutheran historian Kirsi Stjerna writes, “With the fading of the nuns and other related, traditionally important religious roles for women (such as the mystics and visionaries), which coincided with the theologically argued women’s domestication, women’s spiritual presence and theological voice in the church at large seemed to radically diminish.”

The Reformation was, of course, a diverse and constantly evolving phenomenon. Common to the entire movement, however, was the conviction that vowed, celibate religious life as an ideal was non-Scriptural, harmful and must be eliminated, supplanted by another model of ideal Christian life: the individual, saved by faith alone, dwelling productively in the community as believer, spouse and parent.

The strongest symbol of this “non-biblical” ideal of virginity was, of course, the monastery, so in Reformed lands the closing of male and female religious houses was a priority, and the Gospel of domesticity was preached and enforced in their stead. Every woman, it was assumed, was meant for marriage, children and the home. Gone was that space – as the convent was – for women to pursue intellectual and artistic pursuits, to provide institutionalised charity, to interact with religious, political and business interests as leaders of their communities, and – very importantly – to support the community and serve the living and the dead through their once highly valued but now “useless” prayers.

She also points out how the elimination of the commemoration of saints meant that holy women like Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena, even the Beguine mystics, were forgotten and of course, that devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was questioned and reduced. Shutting off that avenue of vocation diminished feminine influence in the Church, not increased it.

Read the rest there.

And think about England: Henry VIII wiped out the religious vocations of his subjects, thwarting God's call to them when he dissolved the monasteries, convents, and friaries. English women, like Venerable Mary Ward, had to exile themselves from their native home to make their religious vows. 

Of course, we can't know what might have been, but think of the contributions English women religious might have made to the reform and renewals efforts of the Catholic Church--England could have its own St. Teresa of Avila or St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, influencing prayer and spirituality for centuries.

As it is, the Catholic women saints--except for Mary Ward--of the post English Reformation era are the martyrs, St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Margaret Ward, and St. Anne Line. 

Since All Saints Day is dedicated to ALL the saints, officially canonized or not, I'd like to think of all the women who remained in England, trying to remain also true to their Catholic faith, assisting priests, attending Mass and availing themselves of the other Sacraments whenever they could, teaching their children the Catechism, praying the Rosary and maintaining other devotions, celebrating the saints and feast days in the traditional way, always in hiding, sometimes in danger--and always praying that a missionary priest might be close by when they were pregnant or when they were dying, so that their babies could be baptized or they finally would receive Extreme Unction and Viaticum. Those are saints! Great confessors of the Faith!

And the exiled English sisters and nuns, far from home, praying for the conversion of England, praying for their families at home, probably particularly for their mothers, trying to live a Catholic life when it had been proscribed by the State.

All holy men and women, pray for us!!

Image Credit: St. Julian of Norwich. Mary Ward image is in the public domain.

Three Days and the Four Last Things

From All Hallows Eve, through All Saints Day, and then on All Souls Day, the Catholic Church is focused on the Four Last Things on these three days.

October 31, All Hallows Eve, is the vigil of All Saints Day and the reminder of Death, the first Four Last Thing. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms of Halloween also remind us of Hell, which we fear, or should fear, even more than we fear Death.

November 1, All Hallows or All Saints, honors all the saints, known and unknown, those beatified and canonized and those who haven't been vetted and honored explicitly by the Church. That day is focused on Heaven.

November 2, All Souls Day, is focused on Judgment AND Heaven. Souls who have faced God's Judgment and are in need of purification prepare for Heaven in Purgatory. They have achieved salvation, but are not perfect or completely ready for Heaven. We pray for them and hope that others will pray for us when we are dead.

Throughout these three days, the theme is being united with God in Heaven forever after death by living and dying with Jesus. In the Early Church, particularly, the surest sign of this unity was the ultimate witness to Jesus as the Messiah and Savior, martyrdom. Since the Eighth Day Books Anniversary Sale (28 years!) last weekend, I've been reading Servais Pinckaers, OP's book The Spirituality of Martyrdom . . . to the Limits of Love, published by the Catholic University of America Press:

Originally published in French in 2000, The Spirituality of Martyrdom is a brief and accessible yet sweeping study of the spiritual significance attached to martyrdom in the early centuries of the Christian Church. Although studies of early Christian martyrdom have proliferated in recent decades, this book stands out by conveying to a wider audience the essence of this spirituality in its relevance to both theology and the life of every astute Christian today.

Pinckaers looks at the period from the New Testament through Augustine, with a concluding chapter tying in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. The volume is generally arranged chronologically, but also includes chapters on the 'Definition of Martyrdom,' 'Martyrdom as Eucharist' and 'Martyrdom and Eschatology' as well as more author-focused studies of the theologies of martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Tertullian, and Augustine. An up-to-date bibliography on the topic is also provided by the translators to supplement the original citations.

This book aims to illuminate the intelligibility of the Church's veneration of martyrs in relation to its fundamental beliefs and practices, and seeks to relate this intelligibility to the broader Catholic moral tradition. The introduction by Patrick Clark highlights how this volume is specifically oriented towards the fields of moral theology and Thomistic ethics in light of the other key contributions that the late Fr. Pinckaers has made to those disciplines.

Pinckaers demonstrates that martyrdom is not merely an event: there's a spirituality that is essential to the Christian life, imitating Jesus in His Passion and Death completely. Even if we are not called to martyrdom--that's a line we often hear in modern Western culture--we are called to that imitation of and identification with Christ.

He begins his discussion with the Beatitudes from the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke. The eighth Beatitude from Matthew: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you" and the fourth Beatitude from Luke: "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake." Then Pinckaers demonstrates how the early Church and subsequent theologians from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas have applied those Beatitudes to martyrdom. Soul-stirring and amazing!